Chapter 1
Entity Headquarters, South Carolina
Entity: A beacon of light in the dark. Specializing in the understanding, classification, conservation and management of supernatural or paranormal creatures and entities.
When the phone rang for the fifth time in as many minutes, Alexys considered throwing it through the window.
She had been trying for the last three hours to clear her inbox of pending cases, barely even pausing to eat lunch at her desk, but the phone was unrelenting.
Alexys snatched the receiver from its cradle and modulated her voice in her friendliest tone: “Thank you for calling Entity, this is Alexys in Human Resources. What can I do for you?”
Her inbox chimed at that precise moment, and her right eye twitched.
“Bad time?” It was her colleague Natalie, fellow HR caseworker and confidante. Her shoulders relaxed.
“Just a little,” Alexys groaned. “If I don’t get through the backlog of cases before the leadership meeting, I’ll never hear the end of it.”
“Cutting it close, I see,” Natalie said with a careless laugh. “You know they care more about completion numbers than pending cases anyway, right?”
They being the corporate overlords that governed their lives.
Alexys cursed under her breath. “Do you need something, or are you just calling to complain?”
“I’m doing you a favor actually,” Natalie chided. “I’m tying up your line.” Alexys rolled her eyes, but a smile tugged at her lips.
Small blessings.
“You’re wasting my most precious pre-meeting time where I quietly wallow in self-pity.”
“Fair enough,” Natalie said. “But in all seriousness, the infield evaluations are on the agenda. It’ll be a long one.”
Alexys took a deep breath, eyed the keyboard, and seriously considered introducing it to her forehead. Her email pinged again.
“I hear that sound in my sleep, I swear,” she groaned.
Natalie snorted. “Just keep your eyes on the prize, yeah? Free coffee at the meeting.”
“I’m hanging up now.”
“Yeah, yeah, see you soon.”
Alexys put the phone down and uttered a silent prayer it wouldn’t ring again.
Entity’s move to an online booking system was meant to reduce calls, but even the best-laid plans had flaws.
By the time cases reached Alexys’s desk, they hit like a hurricane.
Nothing could ever wait, but Alexys appreciated that ghouls, cryptids and other assorted nightmare-makers rarely took a day off.
And for some reason, Alexys just so happened to be in charge of one of the busiest Districts in the country.
To Entity, the U.S. wasn’t a nation but a grid: 20 Districts, carved into smaller, numbered Quadrants.
Each District had a human resources manager, and every Quadrant a Warden.
Wardens were Entity’s eyes on the ground: the salesmen and the investigators.
Alexys was in charge of District 13 and its four Wardens, handling every case that survived the system’s pre-set filters for Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia (with the occasional jurisdictional squabble over Tennessee).
It was Alexys’s job to determine which cases warranted investigations, and which requests could be filtered into the proverbial trash can.
Compelling cases were passed off to one of her Wardens, who took point on the investigation from there.
But truthfully, as soon as monsters entered the equation, that was when Alexys’s work truly began.
She was, after all, in Human Resource Management, emphasis on manage the humans.
That included those they employed, and those who technically employed them, by keeping everyone alive.
Alexys was fairly certain that no company on Earth required more human wrangling than Entity.
The clients were bad enough, but the Wardens?
Not much better. Monster hunting was never an easy gig, Alexys knew.
And still, all things considered, Alexys genuinely loved her job.
But the days leading up to the monthly leadership meeting never seemed to go her way, and it left her resenting the case filing system, her phone, and her desk chair for being far too wobbly.
It was a good day if the only thing she had to do was assign cases, and it was a downright miracle if her inbox ever emptied.
Add in the incident reports, and the complaints, and the follow-ups, and …
The phone rang. She felt her blood pressure spike.
“Thank you for calling Entity, you’ve reached Alexys in Human Resources.”
Static. “Alexys …” More static. “It’s Hank …”
Alexys bit her tongue to keep a groan at bay. “Hank, the week just started.”
Hank cleared his throat. “I know, but that Bigfoot case you’ve just assigned me, well—we both know it’s going to be bogus.” His words rattled her brain.
“It’s not bogus. It’s your job.” Alexys pinched the bridge of her nose. “Bigfoot is a common case for you. Over 70 percent result in real sightings. You have to investigate them.”
“Right, right, and I absolutely will.” They both knew that was entirely dependent on how the rest of their conversation went.
“But before I do, I caught wind of another case in Tennessee. I’m already buddies with the guy reporting it, so I just figured …
” Alexys set the phone down. She knew it was easier to let Hank get it out of his system.
He would try to convince her regardless, and she had a better shot at reasoning with him once he’s worn himself out.
Hank was Alexys’s longest standing Warden.
He operated in her Fourth Quadrant in western Kentucky, where the majority of the cases were either Bigfoot related or dead-end Gravedigger investigations.
She knew he was growing increasingly frustrated, and he could have put in for a transfer years ago, but he was still hung up on some Lizard Man story that Alexys was fairly certain was an actual myth.
But secretly, Alexys liked to think Hank stuck around because he enjoyed working with her, and because she had a reputation for being fairly lenient with her Wardens.
Unless, of course, she had a leadership meeting and evaluations breathing down her neck.
“I think it’s worth pursuing …” Hank’s voice droned on in the background. Alexys pulled up her afternoon schedule and skimmed through it as he talked. She only had until 4 p.m. to get through her backlog before the meeting, and she didn’t have time to talk Hank off another investigatory ledge.
“No, Hank,” she interrupted him just as he was about to reach the I’m going to break the rules anyway part of his speech. “We talked about this. Heather doesn’t want you in her District.”
“But the Banshee, Alexys—” he pleaded.
“Hank, I’m serious.” Alexys tried to sound as stern as possible. “Heather has already filed two complaints this quarter. If you get another one, we’re going to have to put you on a mandatory leave of absence.”
Hank started shouting on the other end of the line. Not at Alexys, of course, but at the universe and the general injustice of it all. Alexys sighed.
Hank and Heather mixed like oil and water.
He’d stepped on her toes on more than one occasion—all in pursuit of “cool” cases—and he was becoming something of a liability.
The more Hank pushed, the more Alexys knew that the only thing standing between him and unemployment was Entity’s desire to reduce turnover.
Sometimes, Alexys imagined she worked for a normal company with normal employees. She imagined the average office worker was easier to deal with than Wardens. Retail, for instance, rarely involved mortal peril. Their incident reports were probably for things like papercuts.
If only.
The month before, she’d had to file one such report for Adam’s broken arm after a run-in with one very angry Black Dog.
“Yes, I under … Hank, listen to me …” Alexys leaned back in her chair.
Why, why, why did District 13 have to be so full of trouble-making overachievers?
“Hank,” Alexys finally snapped. “I know Banshees are ‘cool as shit,’ but that doesn’t mean we can ignore the rules.
You are required to send the information to Heather and let her handle it.
If she asks for your help, then you are more than welcome to assist her. Otherwise, professionally, butt out.”
But—
“Hank Mitchell, your annual review is coming up. You missed getting a raise last year. If you want to revisit that conversation, you’re going to quit arguing with me and listen.”
Hank immediately stopped talking. She had him over a barrel.
After several quiet moments, he said, “I apologize, Alexys. You know how excited I get. Sometimes, I get a bit ahead of myself.”
“I know, Hank. I appreciate your enthusiasm, but there are rules in place for a reason. Let Heather deal with this, and I promise the next Banshee in our District will be yours, regardless of the Quadrant.”
“D’you really mean that?” he asked, the grin in his voice unmistakable.
Alexys smiled too, despite herself, but she had a soft spot for Hank.
In so many ways, he reminded Alexys of her dad—that is, had her dad been less professional and somehow even more chaotic.
But their shared passion for the field, and for Entity, stirred something familiar in her.
It made her protective, even when she was fully exasperated with him.
She felt it was her responsibility to keep him safe, not only from the creatures he investigated, but from himself.
“Yes, Hank, I promise. Now, let me get back to work before you get us both in trouble.”
Hank bid Alexys a quick goodbye and hung up the phone. She should have felt relieved, but something nagged at her in the silence that followed.
Worry? Premonition?
A prickle of unease crept up her spine, but she didn’t have time to consider it. She silenced her office phone and opened the list of pending case files—20 in total, and the leadership meeting loomed. No way in hell was she walking in with this much work to do.
She took a sip of lukewarm coffee and started skimming: Bigfoot sighting in Kentucky; low priority.
She shrugged apologetically before assigning it to Hank.
She scrolled. Bigfoot, more Bigfoot, followed by a Werewolf sighting and another Bigfoot.
She carried on, flicking through a series of banal cases.
That’s when she saw it.
‘Otherworldly’ night terrors.
Alexys bypassed the initial client information and clicked straight on the questionnaire.
She refused to get her hopes up, but it didn’t stop the flutter in her chest as she read.
The case involved a child in Virginia, a boy, experiencing recurrent and disruptive night terrors.
The mother, one Rebecca Sims, was unable to wake him when he was in such a state.
Alexys kept reading: No family history of sleep disorders, no abnormalities in the boy’s bloodwork, and no underlying neurological conditions that may be affecting his sleep. Parasomnias had also been ruled out.
Alexys swallowed.
Could it be?
Her gaze flicked to the faded Post-it note that she’d taped to her monitor.
On it, the random combination of numbers and letters that entitled her to an employee discount.
Its presence served as her daily reminder, the reason she worked as hard as she did.
Alexys wrote it down nearly three years ago, but she hadn’t had the chance to use it.
The discount was small, admittedly, but any reduction in price would help.
As the industry leader, Entity charged enough per investigation to make even the hardiest demon wince.
But there was no one else who could help her.
If, like this boy, her dreams were otherworldly, she didn’t have another choice.
And maybe, just maybe, one of her very own Wardens could help figure it all out.
There was no denying that the lack of sleep was taking a toll on her body and her caffeine addiction was barely tempering her exhaustion, but she still couldn’t bring herself to file an official report.
Not yet. Not until she could afford the whole package.
Whatever was going on with her dreams, supernatural or otherwise, it’d just have to wait.